Turkey and Russia. "Over the whole extent of the South
Sea," says Robert Louis Stevenson, "from one tropic to another, we find
traces of a bygone state of over-population, when the resources of even
a tropical soil were taxed, and even the improvident Polynesian trembled
for the future."[938] He calls the Gilbert atolls "warrens of men."[939]
One of them, Drummond's Island, with, an area of about twenty square
miles, contained a population of 10,000 in 1840, and all the atolls were
densely populated.[940] To-day they count 35,000 inhabitants in less
than 200 square miles. The neighboring Marshall group has 15,000 on its
158 square miles of area. The Caroline and Pelew archipelagoes show a
density of 69 to the square mile, the Tonga or Friendly group harbor
about 60 and the French holdings of Futuma and Wallis (or Uea) the
same.[941] So the Bismarck Archipelago, Solomon, Hawaiian, Samoan and
Marianne islands have to-day populations by no means sparse, despite the
blight that everywhere follows the contact of superior with primitive
peoples.

[Sidenote: Various causes of this density.]

In all these cases, if economic status be taken into account, we have a
density bordering on congestion; but the situation assumes a new aspect
if we realize that the crowded inhabitants of small islands often have
the run of the coco plantations and fishing grounds of an entire
archipelago. The smaller, less desirable islands are retained as fish
and coco-palm preserves to be visited only periodically. Of a low,
cramped, monotonous coral group, often only the largest and most
productive is inhabited,[942] but that contains a population surprising
in view of the small base, restricted resources and low cultural status
of its inhabitants. The population of the wide-strewn Paumota atolls
was estimated as about 10,000 in 1840. Of these fully one-half lived on
Anaa or Chain Island, and one-fourth on Gambier, but they levied on the
resources of the other islands for supplies.[943] The Tonga Islands at
the same time were estimated to have 20,000 inhabitants, about half of
whom were concentrated on Tongatabu, while Hapai and Varao held about
4,000 each.[944]

[Sidenote: Crowded and vacant islands.]

This is one of the sharp contrasts in island life,--here density akin to
congestion, there a few miles away a deserted reef or cone rising from
the sea, tenanted only by sheep or goats or marine birds, its solitude
broken only by the occasional c